Katheryn Winnick returns to Kyiv as Ukraine honours her years of support
Canadian actor Katheryn Winnick during an August 2026 visit to Kyiv as a UNITED24 ambassador. During the trip, Winnick experienced an overnight Russian attack and visited the missile-damaged Pochaina book market.
Photo: UNITED24
Canadian actor Katheryn Winnick was awakened by air-raid sirens during her latest visit to Kyiv, sending her into a shelter during an overnight Russian attack.
It was Winnick’s third visit to the Ukrainian capital and part of a relationship with the country that has become a significant part of her work away from film and television. The Toronto-born actor and director, best known for playing Lagertha in Vikings, has served as an ambassador for Ukraine’s official UNITED24 fundraising platform since 2023.
This time, she travelled to Kyiv for the UNITED24 MODE Summit, held Aug. 21 ahead of Ukraine’s Independence Day.
During the summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented Winnick with the Order of Princess Olga, III class.
The honour was awarded under a presidential decree recognizing foreign citizens for contributions that include supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, charitable work and promoting the country internationally.
Winnick was among several UNITED24 ambassadors in Kyiv for the summit. Actor and director Liev Schreiber was also honoured, receiving the Order of Merit, I class.
For Winnick, however, the trip also returned her to a country with which she has strong family and cultural ties.
A Canadian connection that began at home
Winnick grew up in Toronto in a Ukrainian family and spoke Ukrainian exclusively until she was eight. She attended Ukrainian Saturday school and participated in Plast, the Ukrainian scouting organization, until she was 17.
Her maternal grandparents were born in Halychyna, in western Ukraine, before members of her family eventually settled in Canada.
She had already visited Ukraine before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 and had spoken publicly in support of the country following Russia’s actions in 2014.
After the full-scale invasion began, Winnick and her mother established The Winnick Foundation, which turned its attention toward humanitarian assistance for Ukrainians.
In March 2023, she became UNITED24’s first Canadian ambassador.
Rather than taking on a general spokesperson role, Winnick joined the platform’s Rebuild Ukraine program, which raises money to restore residential buildings and infrastructure damaged or destroyed during the war.
“A home is where a family comes together,” Winnick said when the partnership was announced in 2023.
Her work has since brought her into contact with Ukrainians trying to return to damaged homes. Later that year, she met online with residents of apartment buildings in the Kyiv region that were being restored through the program.
She also travelled to Irpin in May 2023, visiting locations damaged during the Russian invasion alongside Ukrainian-American actor Ivanna Sakhno and representatives of Imagine Dragons.
From a summit to an air-raid shelter
The realities Winnick has spent several years raising money and awareness around followed her into Kyiv on this trip.
UNITED24 said Winnick was awakened by air-raid sirens during an overnight Russian attack and went down to a shelter.
She later visited Kyiv’s Pochaina book market, which UNITED24 said had been damaged by a Russian ballistic missile the previous week.
Her visit turned the focus toward something she has repeatedly raised during her work with UNITED24: the difficulty of keeping international attention on a war that has now continued for years.
Winnick made much the same point directly to Zelenskyy during the Aug. 21 meeting.
She said more stories needed to be told so that continuing coverage of the war did not result in “fatigue or indifference.”
That concern has become part of her role with UNITED24. Winnick’s usefulness to the organization comes partly from the audience she built through Vikings and a lengthy film and television career, but also from her ability to speak about Ukraine as someone raised inside Canada’s Ukrainian community.
At the UNITED24 summit, Zelenskyy told the organization’s ambassadors that their international profiles help Ukraine reach people around the world.
UNITED24 reported that the platform had raised $3.92 billion since it was created by the Ukrainian government in May 2022.
Ahead of Ukraine’s 35th Independence Day on Aug. 24, Winnick recorded a message beneath Kyiv’s Motherland Monument.
“There is no doubt that we will win this war,” she said.
For Winnick, it was another public moment in a campaign that has now lasted more than three years. Her involvement began with her family’s response to the invasion, grew into reconstruction fundraising and has repeatedly taken her back to Ukraine itself.
On this visit, the war she has been asking international audiences to keep watching followed her into the middle of the night.
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